Libervis Articles

The New Era of Libervis: Looking Into The Future

libervisco — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 23:53:13 +0200

Almost four years ago searching for "Libervis" on Google yielded a page describing "Latinvlo: A Latin-Based International Auxiliary Language" on the first page of search results which in its adverbs section defines the word "Libervis" as meaning "most freely". I made this search query in order to test the uniqueness of the word I just coined as a slogan between "Liberty Vision" (LiberVis). Finding that it actually has a meaning in a Latin derived language which implies maximum freedom I have found the name I was looking for.

gOS: A wake up call for Freedomware marketing

libervisco — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 02:45:07 +0100

Think gOS. It might not be such a bad advice after all. It's been hyped up, but it sold out. And there may be lessons in its deployment and success for all of us Free Software and GNU/Linux advocates!

First of all, what is gOS? Well, it is a light operating system based on Ubuntu GNU/Linux. It uses a polished Enlightenment E17 GUI interface and integrates deeply with various web services and applications most of which are from Google. The "g" in gOS apparently stands for "green" which does make some sense considering that it can run on PCs that consume very little resources and hence essentially save up on energy, which is environment-friendly.

It's not the Internet anymore

ariadacapo — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 21:40:48 +0100

It's important that we remember what makes the Internet so interesting and unique. There are two crucial characteristics:

It's fundamentally decentralized, meaning you can cut out any part without affecting the rest,
It allows freedom of access, meaning you have the same ability to access and write it as anyone else.

Because they permit extraordinary flexibility and rapid growth, both of these characteristics have brought the Internet way beyond any other network. Today, they are endangered. How come, and what can we do about it?

Consumer-control industry and their security damnation

libervisco — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 13:40:07 +0200

As Apple's Steve Jobs is announcing that they suddenly "want native third-party applications on the iPhone", something its users have been yearning to have ever since they started buying these phones (even if it meant hacking them), Steve justifies their prior resistance to this kind of openness by security threats. As he says, they are "trying to do two diametrically opposed things at once — provide an advanced and open platform to developers while at the same time protect iPhone users from viruses, malware, privacy attacks, etc."

Now it is time consider what does "open" here really means and what exactly are these security threats he talks about stemming from. "Open" here does not mean "Open Source" and certainly not "Free Software". It means simply letting developers other than Apple write software for iPhone, be it proprietary or Freedomware, just the way Microsoft allows others to write third party software for Windows (which ends up boosting its perceived value quite a bit - no good third party applications equals a not very desirable operating system). Of course, just as Apple fears viruses on iPhone, Microsoft has been and continues to be ridden by them on Windows.

Where are the Free Software Women?

tbuitenh — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 12:26:44 +0200

Today I found an excellent small website about the gender imbalance in Free software. There's been a lot about the topic on the linux/free software news sites too.

Large parts of the free software community are rather hostile towards women, as unfortunately is usual in communities with a huge male majority. Which then prevents the community from becoming balanced because it will be unattractive to women.

I think it is odd the proprietary software industry is closer to gender balance. Aren't people who care a lot about freedom supposed to be more friendly to others who are different from them in any way?

Is .NET on GNU/Linux a Trojan Horse?

libervisco — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 02:17:27 +0200

"Don't talk about Microsoft" is a meme some people would gladly adopt for it is true that many in the Free Software community often appear obsessed with what Microsoft does and how could that be a part of a plan to hurt Free Software and GNU/Linux specifically. However, there are certain facts that can't be validly denied; Microsoft has a reputation of being quite a devious "competitor", if we can even fairly attribute such a noble term to them. They simply shown that they will use every trick in the book, regardless even of legality or ethics, to stay on the top. It is not the only company that finds it in their interest to bury the Free Software revolution, but it is the most prominent and probably the most capable one.

Money for service and your content for free

tbuitenh — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 12:50:31 +0200

It's the big problem of the net: how do you make money if everyone can access the files you produce for free?

Earning money is not evil, it makes it possible to produce more art or information. It's a waste of talent to need a day job to support what you consider your real work.

In the old world it was simpler (but not easy): make a deal with a publisher, they will pay you for the privilege of printing (or publishing in some other way) your works, and their customers (perhaps with a bookshop or something in between) will pay them to get access to your works. Copyright ensured that publishers would have to make a deal with you, they couldn't just take your work as published by another publisher and copy it.

Time for a Free Software Business Initiative

libervisco — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 00:07:11 +0200

It is not enough to have Richard Stallman travel around the world endlessly giving standard Free Software speeches among other things repeating how Open Source is not the same thing as Free Software and how the operating system widely known as "Linux" is actually "GNU/Linux" (because GNU project in fact started that OS). It is not even enough to have Free Software supporters constantly keep pointing these things out and arguing why they believe so.

In my previous article I argued that the Open Source Initiative, founded as a reaction to the perceived unwillingness or ineffectiveness of the FSF to attract businesses to Free Software, was a bad solution because it was based on hiding of the most important part of what makes Free Software what it is, the user freedom. It emphasized business friendly aspects of Free Software at the expense of rather than in addition to its underlying political aspect - one largely based on bringing social and economic justice back to the software world.

Merging "Open Source" and "Free Software"

libervisco — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 19:48:39 +0200

Due to the increased diffusion of "Open Source" as a term this article suggests its gradual phase out in favor of the original "Free Software" term and renaming of the "Open Source Initiative" into "Free Software Business Initiative" (no matter how controversial the proposal may be).

There are three ways we could look at Microsoft's recent approaches to the "Open Source" phenomenon.

1. They are in a process towards genuinely embracing Free Software or Open Source.
2. They are pretending to be embracing it while trying to diffuse and weaken its image.

July 2007 Letter to Free Software Foundation Associate Members

libervisco — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 20:55:21 +0200

The following is a letter I received as an associate member of the Free Software Foundation few days ago (August 2007), but written on July 13, 2007.

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Dear . .,

Help us build Libre Planet - a base for free software activists and community. Your support will help launch Libre Planet by August 2007!

Chamindra de Silva and his colleagues from the Sahana project traveled from Indonesia to Cambridge Massachusetts, in March of this year so that the FSF could award them the Free Software Award for Projects of Social Benefit for their efforts in the wake of the tsunami that devastated Southeast Asia in 2004.